Summer Already??

A gorgeous little violet in the still-wintry brown lawn near our country house. And moments later as I photographed its neighbor:

And yep, that's a real live honeybee, on April 26, and it was 88-degrees up here on the Plateau today in Eastern Pennsylvania, and even higher down the mountain where we were doing a little shopping and the asphalt was sizzling, maybe 95-degrees.

So it's time for shorts and tanks and oh, the distress of the post-Atkins body I now inhabit, with added weight from eating vegetarian for the past 10 months, and being vegan since March. I'm trying to get the right nutrition without overdoing fat and carbs. The worst seems to be eating in restaurants where the only thing I can get that seems like a real entree is pasta, often with garlic and oil and some veggies if I'm lucky or marinara. By the way, Olive Garden has whole wheat pasta with a tasty marinara, and the salad and bread sticks are good. Maybe too good!

I made an awesome vegan Alfredo sauce, thanks to Don't Get Mad Get Vegan's great recipe site. Check it out! I made it with Dreamfield's low-carb macaroni and added a drained can of sliced mushrooms and some baby peas. Yummy, but still pretty rich. I shared some with a vegan friend who agreed it was great, but it didn't help me lose any weight. So the adventure continues.

My First Vegan Passover

Good Pesach to all who celebrate with us here and around the world. We are having our seder tomorrow night with charoset sweetened with agave nectar, matzoh balls made with Ener-G Egg Replacer in a vegetable broth, whole wheat matzohs, horseradish, and Blue Plate Specials from Whole Foods. Why the latter, you ask? Because I am vegan and my partner remains an omnivore. So he'll have chicken, a veggie side and kugel, and I'll have their Candle Cafe Tofu Balls rolled in Sesame Seeds, vegan cherry kugel, and a veggie side.

I feel a lot of gratitude for our many blessings at this special season. More secular than religious, I have chosen to mark the holiday with a few mitzvahs instead of strict adherence to ritual. Somehow it feels that Hashem would find this more worthy of blessing than my stumbling through the Haggadah trying to do all the right things in the right order and telling the story right without losing all the people around the table in my ineptitude.

This is the first year I feel in harmony with the planet and with the values I knew I ought to honor but couldn't seem to reach.